Another from the cast of characters

When in Grad School in Missoula I had a friend named Hal. Hal was an oddity. He was a large man. He wasn't an attractive man. But he was horribly kind.

He was studying Medieval European History, as I remember. He was in his early 40s, and had a daughter. He wore wire-rimmed glasses in very poor repair, and had long stringy hair in a braid. He often wore baseball caps to cover the bald spot in front. He also didn't wash much, and was very smelly. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and had yellowed, long nails. His teeth were yellow. And they kept falling out. He would show up for seminars with one more gap in his mouth. I kept waiting for someone to ask him about it, but none of us dared. He was a sharp intellect, with a very dry wit.

He lived in a rented room downtown in the Eagles Building with a bunch of other single guys. They shared a bathroom per floor. I always imagined him as having a room full of moldering books stacked in teetering piles, empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, a stray tooth or two and plates of rotting food. He could put away pitchers of beer by himself at an amazing rate. All whilst prattling on about primary sources.

I heard later from a mutual friend that in his 20s he had been in Central America doing things for money that he wouldn't talk about very often. Kind of a soldier of fortune scenario. I heard that his teeth were damaged then. I do wonder whatever became of him. He didn't seem overtly tortured, just quietly so. I wonder if he's still in Missoula, having graduated to an apartment in the Wilma building, where he feeds the pidgeons on the window sill and looks out at the Clark Fork River in the evenings. And builds himself a shrine on the mantle using his remaining teeth.